Maxima Library

Ian McDonald’s new tale, which begins with a passionate love story and takes us to the end of the universe and beyond, is set against the same background as his 1995 novel Terminal Café (Bantam). The author’s latest SF novel, Kirinya, is just out from Gollancz (UK). It’s a sequel to Evolution’s Shore, a book that Bantam published in paperback early last year. Mr. McDonald is currently writing Stupid Season—his first mainstream novel.

Faced with an unbearably hard life in the “Factory,” even the radiation poisoning of the “up and out” seems preferable to a girl like…

James Patrick Kelly tells us he has “wanted to write a story that examined gender roles for a long time, and had notes about a three-sexed alien species that date back to 1990. I finally started the story because I needed something to bring to the Sycamore Hill Writer’s Workshop last year. Although I had the ending and the structure when I began, I didn’t find out what it all meant until I got to the last page.”

An expedition to the Cretaceous provides more than one predator with a…

Sarah Clemens is a legal medical illustrator. Her first story for Asimov’s is inspired by “memories of growing up in that strange place called the South, where there’s an eccentric relative in every family and the Civil War is still referred to as ‘The War of Northern Aggression.’ ” The author’s previous sales include stories to Ripper!, Little Deaths, and Twists of the Tail.

Our last tale from M. Shayne Bell, “Mrs. Lincoln’s China” (July 1994), was a finalist for the 1995 Hugo award. His beautiful new story evokes the African continent of H. Rider Haggard and other nineteenth-century authors. A continent that was so mysterious and romantic to the European explorer that he would not be surprised to find…